His rude oratory roused and melted hearers who listened without interest to the laboured discourses of great logicians and Hebraists.

His works were widely circulated among the humbler classes.

One of them, the Pilgrim's Progress, was, in his own lifetime, translated into several foreign languages.

It was, however, scarcely known to the learned and polite, and had been, during near a century, the delight of pious cottagers and artisans before it was publicly commended by any man of high literary eminence.

At length critics condescended to inquire where the secret of so wide and so durable a popularity lay.